Friday, December 22, 2006

Looney Bones

Clever and amusing:

Bugs Bunny is deceased! Wile E. Coyote? Roadkill. And Donald is one dead duck. That’s the premise behind Animatus, an exhibit by artist Hyungkoo Lee that envisions cartoon characters from Warner Bros., Disney, and other studios sans fur, feathers, and flesh. The challenge in creating the 3-D polyester-resin skeletons was that the creatures exist only in a 2-D universe. To reverse-engineer their underlying structures, Lee applied a bit of Forensics 101. By observing the anatomy of each character’s real-life counterpart and incorporating human kinesiology, he was able to figure out how an accident-prone anthropomorphic animal’s femur or spinal column would look. Lee studied, sketched, and sculpted the skulls of birds, felines, mice, and other creatures to get the cranial features just right. The resulting noggins are realistic enough to give the most sharp-eyed art patron pause. If you want to check out Animatus, you better order a rocket-propelled sled from Acme. After its debut at the Arario Gallery in South Korea, the ossified menagerie headed to Turin, Italy, where it will be on display through January.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Pachelbel Rant

The Pachelbel canon may represent the most extraordinary instance of the crossover phenomenon in all of music. During a short period in the early 1970s it went from being a quite obscure work of early music to a universally familiar cultural item[citation needed].
It was played in countless versions in its original notes and
instrumentation, as well as in arrangements for other instruments and
in adaptations into other musical genres. The process shows no sign of
abating.

The popularization is thought to have originated with the release of a 1970 recording of the work (Erato 98475) performed by the Paillard Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Jean-François Paillard.
It was also brought to recognition by what is often considered as the
best recording of Pachelbel Canon, arranged and performed by Karl Münchinger with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 1970.

The canon was first adapted musically in a pop song by the Spanish vocal group Pop Tops on their 1968 hit "O Lord, Why Lord?", which made modest chart showings in both the USA (peaking at #79 on the Hot 100) and the Netherlands. Later that year it was adapted by the Greece band Aphrodite's Child on their hit Rain and Tears. In more recent times, Australian-British string quartet bond played a modified, more updated version of the Pachelbel Canon in their song Lullaby on their 2004 album Classified.

Banya released a rock version of Canon titled Canon-D (Part of the Memories #1) for the game Pump It Up Exceed 2. The music in the game is accompanied by an anime-style music video background.

In 2005, a video of a young Taiwan guitarist calling himself JerryC,
short for Jerry Chang - who arranged and performed an energetic rock
version of Pachelbel's Canon on electric guitar. Over 50 guitarists
have published a "Canon Rock" video.

A guitar rendition of the same played by Korean guitarist funtwo is one of the most watched Youtube clips of all time.

Welcome to the Internet

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Iraq Insurgents Starve Capital of Electricity

Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but isolated
electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively won
their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the
capital from the major power plants to the north, south and west.

The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert,
where the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines
are frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined
and sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to
repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring
that the government falls further and further behind as it attempts to
repair the lines.

And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this
nation, when the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond,
skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of
the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting
material in the lines as possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots
and sold.

What amounts to an electrical siege of Baghdad is reflected in
constant power failures and disastrously poor service in the capital,
with severe consequences for security, governance, health care and the
mood of an already weary and angry populace.

“Now Baghdad is almost isolated,” Karim Wahid, the Iraqi
electricity minister, said in an interview last week. “We almost don’t
have any power coming from outside.”

That leaves Baghdad increasingly dependent on a few aging power plants within or near the city’s borders.

Um, Tower?

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Let It Be

Another installation of Sunday with the Beatles:

I can't disagree with this commenter:

"John Lennon/Paul McCartney: One of the best song writing teams of the 20th century. George Harrison had his share of great songs and who could forget Ringo's "Octopus's Garden?" These guys stand the test of time"